Katie Rochow

In the age of social networking and music streaming, playlists are a common tool for organizing, sharing or exchanging music in the digital realm. Most research, however, emphasizes mainly political, legal, and ethical constraints of music sharing practices yet, neglects their social impact. Thus, this paper investigates the social-psychological foundation of the playlist and analyses its functionality in establishing social relations and communication. Following the theories of Cooley, Mead, Simmel and Solomon, I conducted and analysed interviews with young Swedish men and women, in which they talked about their experiences and attitudes towards playlists. Moreover, all participants compiled their own personal playlist, based on certain personality traits, which were aimed to be recognized by the others during the focus group discussion. The analysis of the data yields the following conclusions: The playlist is a social object, facilitating new forms of communication. The social nature of the playlist is based on the transformation from objective- into subjective culture. By internalizing new technologies, such as the playlist, objects gain social value, thus mere musical content becomes a social form. It is through sharing and exchanging musical compilations that the playlist, as a social form, serves as a vehicle or medium, facilitating new forms of sociation and communication. The communicative function of the playlist is due to its construction through emotions as uniquely subjective judgements, based on the “I” as an emotional self-feeling. Thus, musical compilations take part in the self-construction process, and can serve as a tool for the symbolic expression of the self.
Moreover, the analysis points out that there are differences in how well certain parts of the self can be communicated by a playlist. Emotional expressions of the self are translated into particular universal music patterns most successfully. Furthermore, the analysis shows that some people like to browse through the playlists of others and judge them thereupon, which results in some type of musical voyeurism, termed “playlistism.” In conclusion, I argue that the musical playlist is both, socially implicated and socially implicating, and facilitates communication not only between Swedish youth but across cultural boarders.

Sensing the City - Mapping the Beat is based on participate generated photographs of forty musicians who were given a disposable camera and the task to take pictures of their everyday ‘musical environment’. The variety of visual expressions captured on the photographs resonates with the complex array of everyday life rhythms in those urban spaces, including the music-makers’ quotidian routines, habits and schedules, rhythms of mobility and immobility as well as non-human rhythms such as affect, energies, flora and fauna which are all part of the rhythmic ensembles underlying music-making in the city.

The photographs are shown as two digital slideshows (one for Wellington and one for Copenhagen), projected onto a wall in a continuous loop. The images  are accompanied by the respective soundscape, which provides background ‘city’ noise and create a particular ambience and atmosphere. The combination of images and sound allows for a multi-sensory experience, which yields an understanding of the music-makers’ everyday urban rhythms in its
complexity and multiplicity.